Is it possible that there are more than 100,000 news
reporters in the state of Wyoming?

That is a
number I pulled out of the air while pondering the future of news reporting in
the Cowboy State prior to participating in an intellectual freedom panel recently
Tuesday with other journalists.

As the senior
member of the panel (I started writing news stories 56 years ago), I recalled
writing a cover story for Presstime
Magazine called “The Era of the Editor.”In that story, I described how we live in crazy times of information
overload and instant gratification.In
wild and unpredictable times like these, it has never been more important to
identify quality editors who can cut through all the clutter and noise and help
us find the truth about important news stories.Sounds pretty good, right?

I wrote that
33 years ago!

Matthew
Copeland of Lander thought the future of news might fall more often on the shoulders
of reporters at non-profits like WyoFile, the company he heads.

As Wyoming’s newsrooms
continue to cut back both in quantity and quality of their staffs, independent
outfits like WyoFile are becoming more prominent.Copeland’s digital media platform played a
prominent role in the political coverage of the most recent primary election,
for example.

Ernie Over of
Pavillion thought the future was to focus on local news. During Ernie’s long
career, he has been a newspaper editor, radio announcer and now works for
County 10, a digital news platform based in Fremont County.

Amanda
Nicholoff is a media instructor at Central Wyoming College in Riverton and says
she was pleased with the large number of students signing up for her courses –
over 40.

She said they
were energized and well informed. She was confident of the future of news
coverage based on this experience.

The panel was
organized by Shari Haskins as a way to recognize “Banned Books Week,” so our panel
turned its attention to censorship and national media.

Steve Peck is
the publisher of the Riverton Ranger
and he lamented that folks keep predicting the demise of newspapers.He said the arrival of a new media system
does not automatically mean its replacement of the entity previously providing
the news.

Moderator
Holly Hendrix asked us if we had ever experienced censorship in our careers.

Peck and I, as
newspaper owners and publishers, admitted to being the administrators of
censorship, rather than the victims of it. Peck said, as a proprietor, it is
your obligation to be in charge of your reporters.However, he could not recall a time when he
censored his staff.

I recalled a
time many decades ago when tribal leaders asked me to quash some stories we
were doing about suicides on the Indian Reservation because of the fear of
copycats. I then toned down our coverage because I thought it was the decent
thing to do, much to the chagrin of my over-zealous reporters.

The panel
talked a lot about what President Donald Trump calls “Fake News,” and we blamed
much of it on the president himself, and also the increasing reliance of people
to get their news from the internet and Facebook.

As a group I
think we were able to convince the audience there is a big line between
national news and local news. Because local reporters know their sources (and
their sources know them), it is mighty hard for local news outfits to get away
with publishing or presenting news that is slanted or inaccurate. You will get
called on it by someone.

To me
journalism will always be a noble calling and I have always been proud to call
myself a “journalist.”But in today’s
world, just about everyone can pretend he or she is a journalist.

The key,
though, is something that was drilled into me from day one, which is that the
three rules of journalism are accuracy, accuracy, accuracy.

Also, when I started in this business
the word I heard a lot was “objective.”Then the word I heard a lot was “accurate.” And most recently, the word
that I hear a lot is “fair.”

Even amateur
journalists can do a great service if they can remember these three words –
objective – accurate – fair, when they write items to be posted on the
internet, FaceBook or wherever.

As the longest
serving journalist on this panel the moderator asked me about the future of the
media?My conclusion is the key word for
survival going forward is “Quality.”Excellence will almost always prevail.